Bridging the Gàidhlig-Gaelige gap

PETER URPETH talks to Skye-based poet RODY GORMAN about the publication of an important new anthology of Gaelic poetry, his own work, and the state of Gàidhlig and Gaelige poetry.

IT’S NOT EVERY day that the Scottish launch of an anthology of poetry has to be cancelled due to the publishers selling out of all copies beforehand, but then An Guth is not an ‘everyday’ anthology of poetry.

The publication of An Guth, an anthology of poetry in Scottish Gàidhlig and Irish Gaelige edited by Rody Gorman, came about “to get the two teams together”, and what was originally intended as a literary magazine quickly grew into a more substantial book format, running out at over 200 pages in length and presenting the work of over 60 poets.

Rody, an Irish speaker who started learning Scottish Gaelic some twenty years ago, had begun to formulate ideas for the project when he himself started publishing poetry, and became concerned about the lack of publishing outlets for Gaelic poets.

“Generally speaking,” Rody said, “the world of Gaelic poetry is not in a healthy state, and the opportunities for publication are really limited. Publication outlets aren’t that plentiful. There are a few in Ireland but they are virtually non-existent in Scotland. So, I am pleased that there is now this new outlet for the poetry. In Ireland things are a little healthier because of the nature of publishing in that country.”

Originally, Rody discussed the idea for An Guth with Iomairt Colum Cille, who agreed to the principles of the project, and to providing funding. Rody then contacted Dublin-based publishers Coiscém who, he states, were extremely keen on the idea, enabling him to concentrate on gathering the poems and the other editorial work.

At first, that work consisted mainly of contacting well-established poets and asking for a contribution. Most agreed to be a part of the first edition, and so matters progressed quickly to the launch on the island of Raithlin, but such was the success of the anthology that a second, Scottish, launch had to be cancelled when the publishers run out of copies!

“What did please me in this process,” says Rody, “was that virtually everyone I asked for a submission gave me one and also that the funding from Iomairt Colum Cille is over three years, and so I am guaranteed at least that for the first few issues and so it is now a matter of establishing a reputation for the publication.”

Rody is now hard at work compiling the second edition which may see some changes in format to include some prose works which, Rody feels, are simply too interesting to leave out, an understandable sentiment when among the submissions is a translation into Gaelic by a man from Maine, USA, who lives in Cape Breton, Canada, of a Buddhist Sutra.

“There was a preponderance of quite well known poets in the first one,” Rody declared, “but this will be different in the second one. One of the most pleasing things about the first one was that there were a couple of writers who are well-known poets, but not in either of these languages, so we had people like Michael Cody and Rita Ann Higgins from Ireland and Sìne Nic Theàrlaich (Sheena Blackhall) from Scotland writing in Gàidhlig and Gaelige, and similar things are happening in the second edition.”

As any Gàidhlig or Gaelige speakers will know, the shared elements of the two languages almost certainly out-weigh their differences, but this is poetry and themes and voices adopted by individual poets will, as the collection shows, remain as idiosyncratic and divergent as if the writers came from different continents.

“The themes are different, but that is true about any two poets, anyway, even if they are writing in the same language and regardless of the culture, that is entirely dependent on the individual poets sensibility. There is a lot of naval gazing in both languages, God knows we are all guilty of that, and there’s a lot of questioning of identity because of the moribund nature of both languages, but I suppose that is all part of the literary excitement, the fact that you are writing in a language whose future is by no means assured, and I don’t mean that in a legal sense, I mean that in a real communal sense.

“So the themes are as varied as you’d get in an anthology of work, and the forms are varied as well – some of them are traditional, some are quite avant-garde, some of them are irreverent and some are entirely respectful of tradition.

“When it comes to the differences I would have said, until very recently, that Scottish Gàidhlig poetry was predominantly written by native speakers whereas Irish Gaelige poetry was predominantly not,” adds Rody, “but I think that that is a bit too facile a distinction now because there is a preponderance of learners writing in Gàidhlig now, myself included. We are the sort of people that John Macinnes talked about when he commented on one Gaelic learner’s poem, saying: ‘This loses something in the original!’”

But, as an editor who has recently had the chance to survey a wide-spectrum of new work in both languages, I wondered whether Rody would attribute great significance to the future role that poetry could play in preserving and growing these two threatened languages?

“I am not sure that I think of it in those political terms at all, but from the perspective of the cultural aspects and the social aspects there is a lot more social intercourse now between the literary communities and the language communities of Scotland and Ireland. I also detect a closer understanding of the two cultures from both sides than when I first started learning Gàidhlig as an Irish speaker and I think that that is a beneficial aspect, and I like to think that this is as good a literary collaboration as you are going to get, well, in the field of poetry anyway, and that is going to enhance mutual understanding.”

As a poet, it would be very difficult, if it weren’t for the language, to identify Rody Gorman’s cultural origins. In such collections as Air a’ Charbad fo Thalamh / On the Underground (Polygon) his format is often short, fragmented, a kind of broken haiku, even, that is often emotionally raw and produced with the energy of writing that is done in response to overwhelming circumstance – an immediate, unmediated gesture. There is little room for any extraneous, flowery verbiage, but there is room a-plenty for humour and word play, evidence perhaps of a joy in language if not in experience. These elemental and spontaneous formats are open and inclusive, enabling and generous in their scope.

As well as An Guth 2, Rody is at present working on a collection of verse that is neither Gàidhlig or Gaelige, a kind of ‘Lingua Gadelica’, as he calls it, adding: “I’m deliberately mixing up the two languages, it’s purely experimental and slightly perverse.”

Add to this collection the highly promising progress being made by Rody of collection of haiku from the great masters such as Basho, translated into Gàidhlig, which Coiscém are also publishing.

“I’ve always been very interested in the form because the haiku moment is a very arresting thing, but also because I like to pare everything back to the bone and I don’t believe in using language for its own sake or anything that is in any way superfluous. I tend to ignore adjectives and things that might appear to do a lot of work but which I feel rarely do. I feel the less said the better. Basically, the minimalist philosophy, if you like, is the one I go for.

“Now, there’s nothing particularly radical about that in a Gàidhlig context because that was the nature of early nature poetry anyway, and there are similarities between haiku and that early Gàidhlig stuff. So, I guess you could say that I am in a tradition and then again I’m not, its just the sort of incisiveness that I admire in poets like Norman MacCaig and which is not there in the work of poets such as Hugh McDiarmaid and Sorley Maclean who I would accuse of using the kind of superfluity that I avoid like the plague.”

But, if there are connections of that type are they evident in the work of other Gaelic poets?

“I detect, primarily in the work of the poet Murdo MacDonald (Mac Murchadh a’Stal) from Coll in the Isle of Lewis, a minimalism at work in his poetry but that hasn’t really been a feature of 20th century Gàidhlig poetry at all. In fact, there have been some terrible excesses of adjectivalism in some of the so-called ‘best’ Gàidhlig poetry of the 20th century. I suppose Calum MacNeil also produced a corpus of work that has elements of that as well, so just in the narrow sphere of Gaelic poetry I would detect that tendency and in the poetry of Murdo MacDonald, in particular.

“It is my contention that it is often easier to write in a language than it is to speak it, and Gaelic is a fiendishly difficult language. The advice I was given when learning it was not to worry about the first 20 years, as they are always the hardest and many learners have found that it is easier to write in Gàidhlig than it is to speak it with the same sort of competence.

“Now, in a sense it is the end of the oral tradition. Village verse isn’t as common as it used to be and poetry doesn’t have the same social function as it might have had 100 hundred years ago. The society that supported that has evolved out of it and has ceased to exist to a large degree, so it’s lost that functionality, I suppose, and the power of the orature as opposed to literature is receding.

“The oral tradition has eroded on the one hand but there is a counter balance on the other with the literary tradition taking its place. I detect the same thing in Ireland and I suppose it happens in all post-oral communities, like in the Balkans, for example, and the disintegration of Yugoslavia where oral verse was an important feature of society, and it isn’t to the same extent any more.

“I guess there is a move away from the primitive in the oral to the literary. I’m not sure that is a good thing, I would have liked to have seen Gàidhlig literature preserving the best elements of primitive art, which can, at times, be art at its most sophisticated.”

Rody Gorman can be contacted at An Guth, Cruard, Isle Ornsay, Isle of Skye, IV43 8QS. An Guth is published by Coiscéim, 127 Bothar na Trá, Dumhach Trea, BAC 4 (353 1) 269 1899

© Peter Urpeth, 2004